Having had enough of the chassis I moved onto some bodywork for a bit of light relief. The tank sides went together pretty well with a rather unusual web arrangement for supporting the tops. Unfortunately, I managed to flatten the curves at the front so resorted to a bit of 'lead loading'. This involves filling the area that needs reshaping with little blobs of solder and then filling and sanding back to the correct profile - simple but effective;

Had a bit of a dilemma at this stage as just wasn't sure what to do with the inside of the tanks - weight or electricals? Decision of made for me when I realised that they were just not quite wide enough for any speaker I could find or for a stay alive and only just enough for a chip. So out come Simon's lead which I famously lost a while back only to find it on my foot having fallen from a shelf - ouch! Instructions do warn against filling them too far forward to keep balance but I am just going to add some further back if required. Really don't know where the chip is going to go though;

Next up was some more rather interesting bending for the cab and roof but went surprisingly well;

Now, one little tip for anyone making this kit - solder up the springs first thing. Reason for this is that they are very delicate and just seem to catch on the other frets as you look through for bits and get damaged. Solder them up first and put them away safe. I found it easier to keep them attached to the fret for as long as possible to help in handling. Just one minor criticism of the fret design here is that there do seem to be a lot of very small parts that need to be cut away from others that you are using and cannot be kept attached to the fret. This has resulted in quite a lot of orphaned parts in a little pot just asking to be knocked over!

Being on a bit of a 'roll', I decided to form the boiler next which caused a hunt about the house with a set of calipers for something 16 - 17mm diameter. Cellar, kitchen and workshop yielded nothing and only struck lucky when I hit the bathroom and my wife's lip stick!

Pretty please with how it is going together to think that progress will slow down drastically now that I need to address the cab detail and the valve gear.

As a slight aside, little Iz has been quite fascinated with how this rather boring set of flat parts is turning itself into a train -she now thinks that 3D printing is cheating!